Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that if Mitch McConnell doesn’t call witnesses to testify in the impeachment trial in the Senate he will be helping ‘cover up’ Donald Trump’s actions that led to the proceedings.
‘But the fact is, is one of the things that I think is really important, what I think people should be very aware of, very unusually, the leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has signed on to a resolution to dismiss the case, to dismiss the case,’ Pelosi told ABC News Sunday morning.
‘Dismissing is a cover-up,’ she continued in her interview with George Stephanopoulos on This Week. ‘If they want to go that route, again, the senators who are thinking now about voting for witnesses or not, they will have to be accountable for not having a fair trial.’
Pelosi, the House Speaker, announced Friday she the House will vote next week on a resolution to transmit the articles to the Senate so Trump’s impeachment trial can begin.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Mitch McConnell would be engaging in a ‘cover up’ if he doesn’t allow witnesses to testify in impeachment. ‘Dismissing is a cover-up,’ she insisted
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signed a resolution last week to dismiss impeachment articles if Pelosi refused to send them over within 25 days
Donald Trump lamented Sunday morning that he shouldn’t have ‘the stigma of impeachment attached to my name,’ continuing his denial of any wrongdoing
The move comes after she faced increasing pressure from her party, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to allow the president’s trial to begin.
‘About time,’ McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill in response to Pelosi’s announcement.
Pelosi has been holding out on sending the two impeachment articles – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – to the Republican-controlled Senate.
She said she wanted to prove to the public first that there was a need for the Senate to call witnesses to testify in the trial.
‘I have always said I would send them over. So there shouldn’t be any mystery to that,’ Pelosi insisted in her interview.
‘What we did want, though, and we think we accomplished in the past few weeks, is that we wanted the public to see the need for witnesses, witnesses with firsthand knowledge of what happened, documentation which the president has prevented from coming to the Congress as we review this,’ she said.
The House voted in December to impeach the president, but has since held out on moving forward with sending the articles to the Senate, where McConnell has promised a speedy trial likely without witnesses.
‘Why should I have the stigma of Impeachment attached to my name when I did NOTHING wrong?’ Trump lamented in a tweet Sunday. ‘Read the Transcripts! A totally partisan Hoax, never happened before. House Republicans voted 195-0, with three Dems voting with the Republicans. Very unfair to tens of millions of voters!’
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with other Democrats, have conceded it’s time to move impeachment to the Senate
Republican Senator Josh Hawley, a Trump ally on Capitol Hill, proposed legislation Monday that would let the Senate begin the impeachment trial even without the articles if Pelosi waits longer than 25 days to send them.
McConnell signed on to that measure to further increase pressure on Pelosi.
McConnell wants a speedy trial with no additional witnesses, despite Democrat demands to include at least four more witness testimony in the proceedings, through subpoenas in some cases.
Pelosi again called for additional witnesses in her letter on Friday.
‘As you know, Leader McConnell didn’t budge on witnesses at all. He’s not promising up front to have witnesses,’ ABC’s Stephanopoulos pointed out to Pelosi Sunday morning.
‘I think that he will be accountable to the American people for that,’ she said. ‘So, again it’s about a fair trial. They take an oath to take – have a fair trial. And we think that would be with witnesses and documentation. Now the ball is in their court to either do that, or pay a price for not doing it.’